Coming Home to One’s Self: Butch Muslim Masculinities and Negotiations of Piety, Sex, and Parenthood in Singapore

Abstract

In Singapore, discrimination toward LGBT citizens has been reinforced through a monolithic notion of the traditional Asian family. This ethnography focuses on the lived experiences of 7 ethnic minority Malay Muslim "butch" individuals and their journey to parenthood. Drawing upon frameworks of intersectionality and piety, I explore how butches negotiate and reconcile their queer practices and desires as Muslim daughters around "coming out," foster children with same-sex partners, being a biological parent and their perceptions of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART). Reproductive futures, enacted by Malay Muslim butches, disrupt yet reinforce the durability of "natural" life trajectories scripted through conventions of marriage, family and fatherhood that have, insofar, excluded them. Further, their experiences also offer alternatives to existing literature on same-sex families that tend to render other nonwhite and/or non-Western queer family practices invisible.

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